10 ms·

On the Wildness of Children

137 points by cardamomo 10y ago

bikamonki 10y ago
Profound and to the point! I don't want my kids to go to the factory but I don't have the time/skills to school them myself. What should I do?
- Animats 10y ago
  Montessori school?
  - bikamonki 10y ago
    Where I live the government legally forces all schools to comply with curricula, processes, schedules, etc. All alternative schools are either closed or have somehow broken their methodology in order to adapt and stay open. Hence, I will have no choice but to pick one of them (hopefully one that keeps most of it original philosophy in practice). Is it realistic to think that I can 'fix' my children in the off-school hours?
    - hooch 10y ago
      Mostly I think the "fixing" process is a matter of bringing an antidote to whatever energies it is that you're uncomfortable with, so for me it's making sure they have long stretches of time being gentle and playful and happy, and not interrupting them abruptly when they are blissful. So being present and patient, and not loud and pushy and "you have to" kind of thing. Be quiet and listen to them, help them to keep pets, read them books (when they are older, things like maybe Tom Sawyer) - and leave your work at work. And when they come to find you, look them in the eye and answer their questions, no matter how exhausting it might be. A big part of that for me was putting work aside and just learning to accept that my customers are going to come second for quite a while here (I've done many stretches of solo parenting). And all those times they aren't at school, weekends and holidays - invest the days. Wander into nature, go fossicking on a beach, take them camping, find creeks and waterfalls, build cubby houses, and.. keep quiet :) they will introduce more than enough excitement by themselves. Just my 2c
- jonah 10y ago
  Remember, they're your most important project.
  - norswap 10y ago
    Except that the project has a life of its own :)
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      and a mind of its own.
- barry-cotter 10y ago
  You may not have the time but believe me when I say you have the skills. If you can watch them to make sure they don't injure themselves and answer their questions you can do it. Try reading "A Natural History of Childhood" or "The World Until Yesterday"
  - Hinrik 10y ago
    Google gives exactly 1 result for "A Natural History of Childhood", and it's not for a published work. Is the title correct?
    - bikamonki 10y ago
      This is the closest I found: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood
    - barry-cotter 10y ago
      Sorry, I meant "Anthropology of Childhood" by David F. Lancy
- TYPE_FASTER 10y ago
  During the summer, when the days are longer, we walk up the street and into the woods. Maybe they'll see something and ask a question that will lead to a discussion. Maybe we'll look at the sidecut at the gravel pit we walk past and talk about glaciers. Maybe they'll be tired, get dirt in their shoes, and want to go home. Doesn't matter, just go outside. Relevant: https://haveabit.com/feynman/knowing-the-name-of-something/ https://haveabit.com/feynman/knowing-the-name-of-something/
lingben 10y ago
for those interested in more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_school_%28learning_style%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_school_%28learning_styl... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkID2k091I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkID2k091I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw
teddyh 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School (Previously linked and discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486440)
- callmeed 10y ago
  Just reading the wikipedia article makes it sound like the setting for some kind of Lord of the Flies-esque thriller movie.
wallacoloo 10y ago
Very insightful, and much less alienating than most articles I've read of a similar nature. Come to think of it, this was very well written - it had a nice flow to it, building up to some profound observation, and then starting over with some different viewpoint. My only complaint is over those weird "repeat myself in giant text surrounded by quotation marks" things scattered throughout the article, but that seems to have become an acceptable/recommended practice?... (Really, when did this become a thing? I'm really curious on the history of it, but I don't know which term to search for). I will say that I used to read only nonfiction texts because I enjoy learning about history and the sciences, and these subjects seemed more important than what can be found in fictional stories. But then I began reading more stories, especially slice-of-life type things, and I realized that I was wrong. Reading these stories lends me insight into my own social life - how to be a better friend, etc - and really makes me contemplate which values I want to live by and how I can uphold those in my day to day life. I liken this to the distinction between classroom schooling and life learning. There's a decent-sized class of subjects that are more effectively taught through experience and self-discovery than via instruction. Interestingly, this class of subjects seems to be the most foundational, as they tend to lend insights into things like what makes an individual feel fulfilled, whereas the subjects taught in school are usually more along the lines of tools (that could potentially be applied to the former). But what use is it to learn a tool if you have no sense of what to apply it to? Engagement increases when a student is seeking knowledge of their own accord, usually to satisfy some goal, curiosity or creative drive - none of which are likely to be conceived within a classroom. Certainly some balance is needed.
- Normal_gaussian 10y ago
  It is called a pull quote, and they have been a thing for longer than the internet (from experience). A quick search hasn't yet turned up anything interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote
  - wallacoloo 10y ago
    Hmmm. It makes sense for magazines, where people tend to flip the pages until something catches their eye. But in online content like this, it seems that once somebody's on your webpage and past the fold, a pull quote might not have a significant impact on whether they read the article or not. And for skimming/previewing, I suspect section headings are comparatively effective. Of course, I have no data to back that up. For me, they just create stress when I'm reading. I see one of these pull quotes coming and I think "I should just skip this - I know they'll repeat themselves further down, or that this quote will be a repeat of something said earlier, so I should save myself the time and skip it." But then when I try to do that, the thought becomes, "but what if this quote is unique and not just some text copy-pasted from elsewhere? I need to read it, otherwise I might not understand the rest of this section." And of course, I see these pull quotes edging up from the bottom of the screen a few sentences in advance, and so all this thought distracts me and I invariably have to reread the surrounding text because of that. Hopefully this is something particular to me and pull quotes don't cause others this kind of irrational stress. In any case, thanks for answering my question.
noelwelsh 10y ago
This article reads to me like pastoral romance, with little other than middle class guilt motivating its conclusions. Schools may have been founded to prepare children for the factory (that wasn't the motivation in the UK, AFAIK), but that doesn't mean they cannot change in the intervening century, and they certainly have. Etc. Can education be improved? Certainly! However, mass home schooling is not the answer if you want to keep any semblance to current society. Most people have to work to make enough $s, for instance.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  If formal education only impacted our ability to earn a living wage, then it wouldn't be a problem. The article points out in various ways that the impact of our formal education far exceeds that narrow remit. If I was to summarise, I'd say the way we teach breeds disconnectedness and resentment in a way that alters our personal lives far beyond the time at which our time at school comes to an end. Moving forward, I think we should stop the pursuit of education for the sake of creating compliant workers, and let our education reflect that humans can learn more from self-discovery than authoritarian decree. That being said, it'll probably take decades before we can ween our society off the formal education models that are prevalent, the least we can do in the meantime is to make it less authoritarian. This clip from Michael Moore's documentary 'Where To Invade Next' shows what that can look like by looking at the Finnish school system: http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ
  - Joof 10y ago
    As an anecdote, I loved reading as a kid. Won awards for reading which is a bit silly in retrospect (we don't give awards to kids who enjoy other media). To this day I fucking hate writing. I used to love writing, but if you want me to write something in 5 paragraph form you can gtfo. Every time I tried new writing techniques I was punished, so I stopped doing it all together.
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  One of the things we were taught in my teacher preparation program was that formal schooling has changed little in form over the past 100 years. This was brought home by a picture of a modern classroom side-by-side with a classroom from the 1910s. Both had desks in rows or groups and a single teacher lecturing from the front. The modern classroom was more colorful and I'll wager there were fewer beatings, but still very similar.
sanoli 10y ago
There are literally dozens of alternative school models throughout the world, and I've done research on a lot of them when I had my kids. What I found was broad and varied. Different results, different opinions from parents and former students, different conclusions from researchers. Both on the positive and negative sides. I never got to make up my mind, and I ended up putting my kids in a public school in a small town where there was only one school per age segment. It's a pretty good public school, probably like a good private school, but there's a difference in that the student body is truly varied. My kids study with the son of the garbage collector and the daughter of the supermarket owner. There is a Waldorf school not too far from here, in a neighboring town, but it's as diverse as a very expensive school with everyone arriving in imported cars can be. So I chose not to put my kids there. edit: Plus, I'm not too fond of Waldorf's philosophy, and even less of the Anthroposophy's.
- hooch 10y ago
  Despite how kooky some of his ideas might seem, there is one aspect of Steiner's view that I found particularly insightful (and helpful): that the first period of life, up to when kids really start losing their milk teeth, they are discovering their body, motor skills, their voice, and so on, and in doing so, they are mostly copying the people around them. It's completely experiential, not intellectual. Both my kids suddenly took flight and became much more interested by themselves in things like reading and arithmetic once their teeth started to really change - not due to pressure from adults. And it's only anecdotal, but this has been borne out many times as I've spent time with other families. (Also anecdotal!) but when I spend time with adults who grew up in societies where math and literacy is already emphasised at age 3, for example, I find they are completely unable to stop talking :-)
jstewartmobile 10y ago
Public school kid here. From my experience, the writer is clearly coming from a place of elite Hollywood unreality: http://carolblack.org/about/ http://carolblack.org/about/ Most of the "wildness," or more to the point, "hatefulness" clearly came from the parents. The racism, the homophobia, the Disneyesque self-absorption, the intolerance for anything outside of the present iteration of pop culture and regional sport -- all seeded, fostered, and fed by the family. The kids were barely old enough to even understand any of this stuff, let alone hate someone for it, yet they did! I doubt that the Thoreau experience is going to have much effect on damage inflicted outside of the classroom, and this is a big thing. It's why we have "good" school districts and "bad" school districts within the same county -- expenditure per pupil is the same, buildings are the same, teachers are mostly the same, but the upbringing is not.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "I doubt that the Thoreau experience is going to have much effect on damage inflicted outside of the classroom, and this is a big thing. It's why we have "good" school districts and "bad" school districts within the same county -- expenditure per pupil is the same, buildings are the same, teachers are mostly the same, but the upbringing is not." The author addresses this... "But the truth is we don’t know how to teach our children about nature because we ourselves were raised in the cinderblock world. We are, in the parlance of wildlife rehabilitators, unreleasable." We can't teach what we don't already know, the best we can do is give the kind of support that is conducive to self-education. If that support is not being provided at home, then it's worthwhile providing it elsewhere. So in other words, the concept of schools aren't necessarily bad, but the way in which learning takes place at those schools could be improved by greater emphasis on self-discovery.
  - jstewartmobile 10y ago
    "Addresses" is probably putting it too strongly. She phrases it as a "how to" problem. It would probably be better phased as a "what not to do" problem. If you have an active indoctrination of mental bile in the home environment -- especially among society's "losers" who see everything as some other group's fault (blame it on the Mexicans, hipsters, blacks, yuppies, Jews, etc...), and the only thing countering it is some kind of vague free-range schooling, the results will more closely resemble the barbarism of previous centuries. For every Abraham Lincoln the nineteenth century produced, it produced brigands of no account by the dozens. Of course if you come from an enlightened family of academics, Hollywood producers, or some other group of high-minded winners with a magnanimous bent, then everything she writes sounds just fine.
eliben 10y ago
What bothers me about this piece is that the seven generations she almost describes as "lost" were the most productive generations in humanity's history. Think how the developed world looked in 1850 and how it looks now. This is the work of there generations of "dogs locked in a cage". Something doesn't compute.
- LionessLover 10y ago
  An indirect response: Try this for another explanation/point of view (it's kept short and to the point): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U (About the speaker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_%28educationalist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_%28educationalist...
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  What if those generations are not "lost" but are spent? We took humans, we extracted every bit of work from them, we got a lot of work done and a lot of empty shells for people. What if with each generation it's an downward spiral? Because it certainly looks so.
  - vatotemking 10y ago
    Interesting view. And to that, what have we spent them for?
- dsabanin 10y ago
  I think an important question to ask is, are we happier for it? Are we more content? Not everyone has the same answer to that question.
  - wvenable 10y ago
    Lots of people tend to observe the past as being better than it actual was. Are we happier and more content now? Quite possibly we actually are.
- 10y ago
appagrad 10y ago
The parts on an open-mind always learning remind me of my childhood as a "homeschooler" and recent college experiences. While we spent plenty of time with the books, my mother emphasized the joy of learning when I was a child. Despite few tests and no grades, my brother and I scored above average on our year-end state tests. Such scores aren't a testament to our intelligence but instead the result of allowing a child's mind to absorb its environment as a process of life. When I entered college, I was astonished at how students viewed learning. It was a chore, a separate part of life they were obligated to endure. The vast majority of my peers and later students I taught simply couldn't learn on their own. They couldn't read the book and learn. To me, learning is enjoyable, a life-long process I will continue to old age.
- Joof 10y ago
  I could learn on my own, but I had a god awful time in classes that demanded attendance or primarily used in-class material. I just don't function in that environment. Give me a textbook, maybe a video and some problems to work on.
  - appagrad 10y ago
    Agreed...the lecture style with an expensive backup reference (aka textbook) is so wasteful. What one can learn by reading a good text in an hour is at least twice the content as a lecture, in my experience.
- biomcgary 10y ago
  I had a similar experience, but many homeschooling parents just re-invent the drudgery and blinkers of the stereotypical school. You and I are fortunate that our mothers emphasized the joy of learning.
  - cardamomo 10y ago
    This seems to support the author's point that adults have forgotten about "wildness" and non-hierarchical, non-institutional ways to learn. Without a concerted effort to the contrary, adults tend to teach the way they were taught.
pappyo 10y ago
TLDR; The modern school was built in accordance with an industrial age mindset; children are raw materials and a school produces a functioning member of/worker for society. However, this institution stifles the child's "wildness" or open-minded learning that allows her/him to connect with the world, and become an eternally curious, more balanced human beings. I agree with the author's premise that the current (US public) school model is not conducive for a child's future. The school's churns out students so they can be ready for JOBS (or get into a college that will help you get JOBS). It's been easy to fall into that trap with capitalism as the driving force behind everything. Capitalism has been evolving over the centuries, forcing workers into more specific disciplines then ever before (seriously, how many of us have 3 or 4 word job titles?). However, that isn't to say structure doesn't have it's place. The author didn't to a good job of drawing some sort of line where structure is needed. A line is helpful here. That line should look like what we want our schools to ultimately achieve for our children and society. Are we a society of workers? Or do we want to be something else?
- dominotw 10y ago
  Living in any society automatically means you have to curtail your 'wildness'. Its 'society-tax'. The way you define yourself(eg: family man, software engineer ect) is definition of your relationship with the society. And anything that is defined is not 'wild'.
  - pappyo 10y ago
    I agree, but we as a society should still have a say in how we curtail our wildness. It would appear that our say has been taken away, or at least hijacked, recently.
    - dominotw 10y ago
      >It would appear that our say has been taken away, or at least hijacked, recently. Taken away by who though? There is no secret cabal called 'society' out there. You are the society. society is pure reflection of your actions, your thoughts, your relationship with others. Society gives us security, no one is forcing people to send their kids to these 'wildnesss killing schools' but we do it because it gives use security and makes us feel safe. And that is the price you have to pay for that security, the security that your mind seeks. The conflict we think we are in with the society is merely a conflict within ourselves, the conflict of self that seeks both security and freedom .
YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
So, I see this as a rich white gal bragging about how smart her kids are, or how smart her ways made her kids be. Because I can't escape the fact that the "bad" education that "cinderblock schools" dispense is the only one that everybody can afford. For most kids in the world today, going to a cinderblock school is their only chance at an education and their only way to slightly improve their life situation and that of their families. To be allowed to "run wild" you have to come from a family with a certain privilege, if I may use the word. Great if you can afford that. But to then turn around and say that everyone else is made dumb by going to school is a little on the nose (and completely missing the point). It's a bit like saying that a Ferrari is so much better as a car than what most people drive- so why doesn't everyone let go of their silly little bucket-like cars and hop into a sexy red hot Italian supercar? Because everyone can't afford one, that's why.
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  There's plenty of undeveloped land in this world. You don't need to be rich to find a remote area where nobody cares enough to look for you. You do need to be rich to have convenient access to nature in exactly the doses you prefer.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
    >> You do need to be rich to have convenient access to nature in exactly the doses you prefer. Yes, rather.
- cardamomo 10y ago
  The question of privilege is an important one, and the author would do well to confront it more transparently, since it's easy to assume she and her family have had many options available to them that many people do not. But I do not think that diminishes the value of posing her broader question, which seems to be, "What kind of learning is best for our children?" From there we might ask, "What kind of society can we build to support our children's growth?" This line of inquiry might be transformative beyond merely the kinds of activities children do in school.
jeffdavis 10y ago
I didn't read the whole article, but it seems about 10% truth, 90% natural fallacy.
- cardamomo 10y ago
  Could you please explain what you mean?
  - eutropia 10y ago
    Not the GP, but I believe jeffdavis is referring to the naturalistic fallacy: wherein an appeal to nature is made as a way of arguing a point (e.g. vanilla extract is better than synthetic vanillin, even though it's the same molecule). Logically there's nothing intrinsically more correct about things from nature that makes your point valid. However, I think GP should read the entire article, because the aims of the modern education system are well documented in their intent to create compliant workers. The authors analogy of humans to Zoo animals makes a lot of sense, given that we are only Mammals, after all.
TYPE_FASTER 10y ago
Going to public school and experiencing nature don't have to be mutually exclusive. I also don't think it's fair to paint all teachers and public schools as an institution with the same broad brush. Look, if you want your kids to have these experiences, then take them to the park/woods/beach/river/somewhere. Independent thought exists outside of school. "They don’t know if the moon is waxing or waning, if that berry is edible or poisonous, if that song is for mating or warning." My daughter knows waxing vs. waning. She learned it at school.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

137 points by cardamomo 10y ago

Profound and to the point! I don't want my kids to go to the factory but I don't have the time/skills to school them myself. What should I do?

Animats 10y ago
Montessori school?
- bikamonki 10y ago
  Where I live the government legally forces all schools to comply with curricula, processes, schedules, etc. All alternative schools are either closed or have somehow broken their methodology in order to adapt and stay open. Hence, I will have no choice but to pick one of them (hopefully one that keeps most of it original philosophy in practice). Is it realistic to think that I can 'fix' my children in the off-school hours?
  - hooch 10y ago
    Mostly I think the "fixing" process is a matter of bringing an antidote to whatever energies it is that you're uncomfortable with, so for me it's making sure they have long stretches of time being gentle and playful and happy, and not interrupting them abruptly when they are blissful. So being present and patient, and not loud and pushy and "you have to" kind of thing. Be quiet and listen to them, help them to keep pets, read them books (when they are older, things like maybe Tom Sawyer) - and leave your work at work. And when they come to find you, look them in the eye and answer their questions, no matter how exhausting it might be. A big part of that for me was putting work aside and just learning to accept that my customers are going to come second for quite a while here (I've done many stretches of solo parenting). And all those times they aren't at school, weekends and holidays - invest the days. Wander into nature, go fossicking on a beach, take them camping, find creeks and waterfalls, build cubby houses, and.. keep quiet :) they will introduce more than enough excitement by themselves. Just my 2c
jonah 10y ago
Remember, they're your most important project.
- norswap 10y ago
  Except that the project has a life of its own :)
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    and a mind of its own.
barry-cotter 10y ago
You may not have the time but believe me when I say you have the skills. If you can watch them to make sure they don't injure themselves and answer their questions you can do it. Try reading "A Natural History of Childhood" or "The World Until Yesterday"
- Hinrik 10y ago
  Google gives exactly 1 result for "A Natural History of Childhood", and it's not for a published work. Is the title correct?
  - bikamonki 10y ago
    This is the closest I found: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood
  - barry-cotter 10y ago
    Sorry, I meant "Anthropology of Childhood" by David F. Lancy
TYPE_FASTER 10y ago
During the summer, when the days are longer, we walk up the street and into the woods. Maybe they'll see something and ask a question that will lead to a discussion. Maybe we'll look at the sidecut at the gravel pit we walk past and talk about glaciers. Maybe they'll be tired, get dirt in their shoes, and want to go home. Doesn't matter, just go outside. Relevant: https://haveabit.com/feynman/knowing-the-name-of-something/ https://haveabit.com/feynman/knowing-the-name-of-something/

lingben 10y ago

for those interested in more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_school_%28learning_style%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_school_%28learning_styl... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkID2k091I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkID2k091I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw

teddyh 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Valley_School (Previously linked and discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8486440)

callmeed 10y ago
Just reading the wikipedia article makes it sound like the setting for some kind of Lord of the Flies-esque thriller movie.

wallacoloo 10y ago

Very insightful, and much less alienating than most articles I've read of a similar nature. Come to think of it, this was very well written - it had a nice flow to it, building up to some profound observation, and then starting over with some different viewpoint. My only complaint is over those weird "repeat myself in giant text surrounded by quotation marks" things scattered throughout the article, but that seems to have become an acceptable/recommended practice?... (Really, when did this become a thing? I'm really curious on the history of it, but I don't know which term to search for). I will say that I used to read only nonfiction texts because I enjoy learning about history and the sciences, and these subjects seemed more important than what can be found in fictional stories. But then I began reading more stories, especially slice-of-life type things, and I realized that I was wrong. Reading these stories lends me insight into my own social life - how to be a better friend, etc - and really makes me contemplate which values I want to live by and how I can uphold those in my day to day life. I liken this to the distinction between classroom schooling and life learning. There's a decent-sized class of subjects that are more effectively taught through experience and self-discovery than via instruction. Interestingly, this class of subjects seems to be the most foundational, as they tend to lend insights into things like what makes an individual feel fulfilled, whereas the subjects taught in school are usually more along the lines of tools (that could potentially be applied to the former). But what use is it to learn a tool if you have no sense of what to apply it to? Engagement increases when a student is seeking knowledge of their own accord, usually to satisfy some goal, curiosity or creative drive - none of which are likely to be conceived within a classroom. Certainly some balance is needed.

Normal_gaussian 10y ago
It is called a pull quote, and they have been a thing for longer than the internet (from experience). A quick search hasn't yet turned up anything interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote
- wallacoloo 10y ago
  Hmmm. It makes sense for magazines, where people tend to flip the pages until something catches their eye. But in online content like this, it seems that once somebody's on your webpage and past the fold, a pull quote might not have a significant impact on whether they read the article or not. And for skimming/previewing, I suspect section headings are comparatively effective. Of course, I have no data to back that up. For me, they just create stress when I'm reading. I see one of these pull quotes coming and I think "I should just skip this - I know they'll repeat themselves further down, or that this quote will be a repeat of something said earlier, so I should save myself the time and skip it." But then when I try to do that, the thought becomes, "but what if this quote is unique and not just some text copy-pasted from elsewhere? I need to read it, otherwise I might not understand the rest of this section." And of course, I see these pull quotes edging up from the bottom of the screen a few sentences in advance, and so all this thought distracts me and I invariably have to reread the surrounding text because of that. Hopefully this is something particular to me and pull quotes don't cause others this kind of irrational stress. In any case, thanks for answering my question.

noelwelsh 10y ago

This article reads to me like pastoral romance, with little other than middle class guilt motivating its conclusions. Schools may have been founded to prepare children for the factory (that wasn't the motivation in the UK, AFAIK), but that doesn't mean they cannot change in the intervening century, and they certainly have. Etc. Can education be improved? Certainly! However, mass home schooling is not the answer if you want to keep any semblance to current society. Most people have to work to make enough $s, for instance.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
If formal education only impacted our ability to earn a living wage, then it wouldn't be a problem. The article points out in various ways that the impact of our formal education far exceeds that narrow remit. If I was to summarise, I'd say the way we teach breeds disconnectedness and resentment in a way that alters our personal lives far beyond the time at which our time at school comes to an end. Moving forward, I think we should stop the pursuit of education for the sake of creating compliant workers, and let our education reflect that humans can learn more from self-discovery than authoritarian decree. That being said, it'll probably take decades before we can ween our society off the formal education models that are prevalent, the least we can do in the meantime is to make it less authoritarian. This clip from Michael Moore's documentary 'Where To Invade Next' shows what that can look like by looking at the Finnish school system: http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ http://youtu.be/1ZbGlDMF7HQ
- Joof 10y ago
  As an anecdote, I loved reading as a kid. Won awards for reading which is a bit silly in retrospect (we don't give awards to kids who enjoy other media). To this day I fucking hate writing. I used to love writing, but if you want me to write something in 5 paragraph form you can gtfo. Every time I tried new writing techniques I was punished, so I stopped doing it all together.
jschwartzi 10y ago
One of the things we were taught in my teacher preparation program was that formal schooling has changed little in form over the past 100 years. This was brought home by a picture of a modern classroom side-by-side with a classroom from the 1910s. Both had desks in rows or groups and a single teacher lecturing from the front. The modern classroom was more colorful and I'll wager there were fewer beatings, but still very similar.

sanoli 10y ago

There are literally dozens of alternative school models throughout the world, and I've done research on a lot of them when I had my kids. What I found was broad and varied. Different results, different opinions from parents and former students, different conclusions from researchers. Both on the positive and negative sides. I never got to make up my mind, and I ended up putting my kids in a public school in a small town where there was only one school per age segment. It's a pretty good public school, probably like a good private school, but there's a difference in that the student body is truly varied. My kids study with the son of the garbage collector and the daughter of the supermarket owner. There is a Waldorf school not too far from here, in a neighboring town, but it's as diverse as a very expensive school with everyone arriving in imported cars can be. So I chose not to put my kids there. edit: Plus, I'm not too fond of Waldorf's philosophy, and even less of the Anthroposophy's.

hooch 10y ago
Despite how kooky some of his ideas might seem, there is one aspect of Steiner's view that I found particularly insightful (and helpful): that the first period of life, up to when kids really start losing their milk teeth, they are discovering their body, motor skills, their voice, and so on, and in doing so, they are mostly copying the people around them. It's completely experiential, not intellectual. Both my kids suddenly took flight and became much more interested by themselves in things like reading and arithmetic once their teeth started to really change - not due to pressure from adults. And it's only anecdotal, but this has been borne out many times as I've spent time with other families. (Also anecdotal!) but when I spend time with adults who grew up in societies where math and literacy is already emphasised at age 3, for example, I find they are completely unable to stop talking :-)

jstewartmobile 10y ago

Public school kid here. From my experience, the writer is clearly coming from a place of elite Hollywood unreality: http://carolblack.org/about/ http://carolblack.org/about/ Most of the "wildness," or more to the point, "hatefulness" clearly came from the parents. The racism, the homophobia, the Disneyesque self-absorption, the intolerance for anything outside of the present iteration of pop culture and regional sport -- all seeded, fostered, and fed by the family. The kids were barely old enough to even understand any of this stuff, let alone hate someone for it, yet they did! I doubt that the Thoreau experience is going to have much effect on damage inflicted outside of the classroom, and this is a big thing. It's why we have "good" school districts and "bad" school districts within the same county -- expenditure per pupil is the same, buildings are the same, teachers are mostly the same, but the upbringing is not.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "I doubt that the Thoreau experience is going to have much effect on damage inflicted outside of the classroom, and this is a big thing. It's why we have "good" school districts and "bad" school districts within the same county -- expenditure per pupil is the same, buildings are the same, teachers are mostly the same, but the upbringing is not." The author addresses this... "But the truth is we don’t know how to teach our children about nature because we ourselves were raised in the cinderblock world. We are, in the parlance of wildlife rehabilitators, unreleasable." We can't teach what we don't already know, the best we can do is give the kind of support that is conducive to self-education. If that support is not being provided at home, then it's worthwhile providing it elsewhere. So in other words, the concept of schools aren't necessarily bad, but the way in which learning takes place at those schools could be improved by greater emphasis on self-discovery.
- jstewartmobile 10y ago
  "Addresses" is probably putting it too strongly. She phrases it as a "how to" problem. It would probably be better phased as a "what not to do" problem. If you have an active indoctrination of mental bile in the home environment -- especially among society's "losers" who see everything as some other group's fault (blame it on the Mexicans, hipsters, blacks, yuppies, Jews, etc...), and the only thing countering it is some kind of vague free-range schooling, the results will more closely resemble the barbarism of previous centuries. For every Abraham Lincoln the nineteenth century produced, it produced brigands of no account by the dozens. Of course if you come from an enlightened family of academics, Hollywood producers, or some other group of high-minded winners with a magnanimous bent, then everything she writes sounds just fine.

eliben 10y ago

What bothers me about this piece is that the seven generations she almost describes as "lost" were the most productive generations in humanity's history. Think how the developed world looked in 1850 and how it looks now. This is the work of there generations of "dogs locked in a cage". Something doesn't compute.

LionessLover 10y ago
An indirect response: Try this for another explanation/point of view (it's kept short and to the point): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U (About the speaker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_%28educationalist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_%28educationalist...
guard-of-terra 10y ago
What if those generations are not "lost" but are spent? We took humans, we extracted every bit of work from them, we got a lot of work done and a lot of empty shells for people. What if with each generation it's an downward spiral? Because it certainly looks so.
- vatotemking 10y ago
  Interesting view. And to that, what have we spent them for?
dsabanin 10y ago
I think an important question to ask is, are we happier for it? Are we more content? Not everyone has the same answer to that question.
- wvenable 10y ago
  Lots of people tend to observe the past as being better than it actual was. Are we happier and more content now? Quite possibly we actually are.
10y ago

appagrad 10y ago

The parts on an open-mind always learning remind me of my childhood as a "homeschooler" and recent college experiences. While we spent plenty of time with the books, my mother emphasized the joy of learning when I was a child. Despite few tests and no grades, my brother and I scored above average on our year-end state tests. Such scores aren't a testament to our intelligence but instead the result of allowing a child's mind to absorb its environment as a process of life. When I entered college, I was astonished at how students viewed learning. It was a chore, a separate part of life they were obligated to endure. The vast majority of my peers and later students I taught simply couldn't learn on their own. They couldn't read the book and learn. To me, learning is enjoyable, a life-long process I will continue to old age.

Joof 10y ago
I could learn on my own, but I had a god awful time in classes that demanded attendance or primarily used in-class material. I just don't function in that environment. Give me a textbook, maybe a video and some problems to work on.
- appagrad 10y ago
  Agreed...the lecture style with an expensive backup reference (aka textbook) is so wasteful. What one can learn by reading a good text in an hour is at least twice the content as a lecture, in my experience.
biomcgary 10y ago
I had a similar experience, but many homeschooling parents just re-invent the drudgery and blinkers of the stereotypical school. You and I are fortunate that our mothers emphasized the joy of learning.
- cardamomo 10y ago
  This seems to support the author's point that adults have forgotten about "wildness" and non-hierarchical, non-institutional ways to learn. Without a concerted effort to the contrary, adults tend to teach the way they were taught.

pappyo 10y ago

TLDR; The modern school was built in accordance with an industrial age mindset; children are raw materials and a school produces a functioning member of/worker for society. However, this institution stifles the child's "wildness" or open-minded learning that allows her/him to connect with the world, and become an eternally curious, more balanced human beings. I agree with the author's premise that the current (US public) school model is not conducive for a child's future. The school's churns out students so they can be ready for JOBS (or get into a college that will help you get JOBS). It's been easy to fall into that trap with capitalism as the driving force behind everything. Capitalism has been evolving over the centuries, forcing workers into more specific disciplines then ever before (seriously, how many of us have 3 or 4 word job titles?). However, that isn't to say structure doesn't have it's place. The author didn't to a good job of drawing some sort of line where structure is needed. A line is helpful here. That line should look like what we want our schools to ultimately achieve for our children and society. Are we a society of workers? Or do we want to be something else?

dominotw 10y ago
Living in any society automatically means you have to curtail your 'wildness'. Its 'society-tax'. The way you define yourself(eg: family man, software engineer ect) is definition of your relationship with the society. And anything that is defined is not 'wild'.
- pappyo 10y ago
  I agree, but we as a society should still have a say in how we curtail our wildness. It would appear that our say has been taken away, or at least hijacked, recently.
  - dominotw 10y ago
    >It would appear that our say has been taken away, or at least hijacked, recently. Taken away by who though? There is no secret cabal called 'society' out there. You are the society. society is pure reflection of your actions, your thoughts, your relationship with others. Society gives us security, no one is forcing people to send their kids to these 'wildnesss killing schools' but we do it because it gives use security and makes us feel safe. And that is the price you have to pay for that security, the security that your mind seeks. The conflict we think we are in with the society is merely a conflict within ourselves, the conflict of self that seeks both security and freedom .

YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago

So, I see this as a rich white gal bragging about how smart her kids are, or how smart her ways made her kids be. Because I can't escape the fact that the "bad" education that "cinderblock schools" dispense is the only one that everybody can afford. For most kids in the world today, going to a cinderblock school is their only chance at an education and their only way to slightly improve their life situation and that of their families. To be allowed to "run wild" you have to come from a family with a certain privilege, if I may use the word. Great if you can afford that. But to then turn around and say that everyone else is made dumb by going to school is a little on the nose (and completely missing the point). It's a bit like saying that a Ferrari is so much better as a car than what most people drive- so why doesn't everyone let go of their silly little bucket-like cars and hop into a sexy red hot Italian supercar? Because everyone can't afford one, that's why.

jeffdavis 10y ago
There's plenty of undeveloped land in this world. You don't need to be rich to find a remote area where nobody cares enough to look for you. You do need to be rich to have convenient access to nature in exactly the doses you prefer.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  >> You do need to be rich to have convenient access to nature in exactly the doses you prefer. Yes, rather.
cardamomo 10y ago
The question of privilege is an important one, and the author would do well to confront it more transparently, since it's easy to assume she and her family have had many options available to them that many people do not. But I do not think that diminishes the value of posing her broader question, which seems to be, "What kind of learning is best for our children?" From there we might ask, "What kind of society can we build to support our children's growth?" This line of inquiry might be transformative beyond merely the kinds of activities children do in school.

jeffdavis 10y ago

I didn't read the whole article, but it seems about 10% truth, 90% natural fallacy.

cardamomo 10y ago
Could you please explain what you mean?
- eutropia 10y ago
  Not the GP, but I believe jeffdavis is referring to the naturalistic fallacy: wherein an appeal to nature is made as a way of arguing a point (e.g. vanilla extract is better than synthetic vanillin, even though it's the same molecule). Logically there's nothing intrinsically more correct about things from nature that makes your point valid. However, I think GP should read the entire article, because the aims of the modern education system are well documented in their intent to create compliant workers. The authors analogy of humans to Zoo animals makes a lot of sense, given that we are only Mammals, after all.

TYPE_FASTER 10y ago

Going to public school and experiencing nature don't have to be mutually exclusive. I also don't think it's fair to paint all teachers and public schools as an institution with the same broad brush. Look, if you want your kids to have these experiences, then take them to the park/woods/beach/river/somewhere. Independent thought exists outside of school. "They don’t know if the moon is waxing or waning, if that berry is edible or poisonous, if that song is for mating or warning." My daughter knows waxing vs. waning. She learned it at school.

deleted 10y ago

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